Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202833
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Flood damage was expected to worsen in Florida, where at least 1,200 people fled their homes. Some rivers in the northern part of the state wouldn't crest until Wednesday, a National Weather Service forecaster said today.
In Alabama and Georgia, authorities began assessing damage from storms that dumped up to 16 inches of rain Thursday and Friday. Flood-related accidents killed 17 people and about 4,000 fled their homes in those two states.
Cold air followed receding flood waters in Alabama and Georgia today, the first day of spring. Temperatures dipped to 30 degrees this morning in Birmingham, Ala., and hovered just above freezing in Atlanta. Freezing temperatures also were recorded in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt asked President Bush for federal aid Monday for Coffee County, where the swollen Pea River burst a levee and inundated the city of Elba.
Hunt also requested federal aid for 25 other flooded counties in central and south Alabama, but said he would ask Bush to help Coffee County first.
Some of Elba's evacuees returned Monday for their first look at the destruction.
"It didn't really hurt until I got here. Then it tore me up," said Mike Simmons, who returned home to find the water level had reached all the way to the ceiling. Smaller items were still floating in several inches of water.
National Guardsmen and state troopers patrolled the streets enforcing a 7 p.m. curfew after some reports of looting in downtown Elba, which remained under several feet of water. Telephone, gas and electric service was out.
There was another problem in Elba and elsewhere in the region: the high waters flushed out snakes, which could be seen swimming through inundated neighborhoods.
The Pea River empties into the Choctawhatchee River in Florida, and its muddy water was already a foot deep in Billy Wayne Bailey's four-bedroom house in Caryville on Monday and was expected to rise another 3 feet before cresting today.
"Well, it's already done the damage so it doesn't matter how far it goes," Bailey said as he looked down on his home from nearby U.S. 90.
"We got out the night they showed Elba on television," Bailey said. "I didn't wait for nobody to tell me. I just went ahead and left. I've been snatching other people out for the last two days."
Washington County commissioners on Monday ordered all of Caryville's 630 residents and 200 people in surrounding communities to move to higher ground. Hundreds more fled voluntarily.
A 20-mile stretch of west-bound Interstate 10, from Bonifay to DeFuniak Springs, was closed by state transportation officials Monday afternoon because of concern about erosion around the supports of the highway's bridge over the Choctawhatchee.
by CNB